Synopsis

Movie Plot :

Riggan Thomson is a faded American actor who is famous for playing the superhero Birdman in a film trilogy 20 years ago. He is tormented by the mocking and critical internal voice of Birdman and is frequently shown performing feats of levitation and telekinesis. Riggan is trying to gain recognition as a serious actor for writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”

Jake, Riggan’s best friend and lawyer, is producing the play which co-stars Riggan’s girlfriend Laura and Broadway débutante Lesley. Riggan’s daughter Sam, a recovering drug addict whom he is trying to reconnect with, is working as his assistant. The day before the first preview, a light fixture falls onto Riggan’s hopeless co-star Ralph, which Riggan tells Jake he caused. At Lesley’s suggestion, Riggan replaces Ralph with her boyfriend, the brilliant but volatile method actor Mike Shiner. The first previews are disastrous: Mike breaks character over the replacement of his gin with water, attempts to have real sex with Lesley during a sex scene and claims that the prop gun does not look real which is hindering his performance. Riggan clashes continually with Mike and is incensed at influential theater critic Tabitha Dickinson’s praise for Mike’s performance, but Jake persuades him to continue with the play. Riggan catches Sam using marijuana and berates her; she tells him he is expendable and that his play is a vanity project.

During the final preview, Riggan takes a cigarette break and accidentally locks himself outside with his robe stuck in the fire escape door. He is forced to walk through Times Square in his underwear and enter through the audience to do the final scene. A concerned Sam is waiting in his dressing room after the show. She thinks the performance was very weird but sort of cool. She shows him that the Times Square footage is going viral and explains how this actually helps him.